High performance, digital signal processing applications conventionally require floating point arithmetic to be performed at high speeds. General purpose CPUs are not suited to performing real time arithmetic. Those skilled in the art have developed different approaches to producing specialized chips adapted for floating point arithmetic. One such unit is the RAY 100 Floating Point Accumulator Processor from Raytheon Corporation. Another arithmetic chip designed for fixed-point numbers is that described in copending patent application Ser. No. 056,627, U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,164, issued Aug. 15, 1989.